Miroslaw Balka: DIE TRAUMDEUTUNG, 75,32m AMSL, Freud Museum

For his first solo exhibition in London since his 2009 Tate Modern Turbine Hall installation, Miroslaw Balka has produced a show split between two venues; White Cube on Mason’s Yard and The Freud Museum in North London. Each half is stunning in its own way. But taken together, the two parts add up to something greater.

The name of the dual exhibition; Die Traumdeutung, refers to the original title of Sigmund Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams. Each iteration of the exhibition is also appended with a number; 75.32 at the Freud Museum and 25.31 at White Cube. This number refers to the exact height above sea level of the two venues, alluding to a theme of geographical displacement that runs throughout both shows.

There is a hint of the Freudian notion of ‘the uncanny’ (something both familiar yet alien at the same time) in the exhibition’s repetition. What is most striking is how successfully Balka adapts the work to fit into two so very different venues. While White Cube’s building in Mason’s Yard is a huge concrete void, the Freud museum is a beautifully preserved family home, albeit a remarkable one. 

The museum’s main exhibition space features an installation called we still need. Comprising an arrangement of plywood crates. The installation refers directly to a 1942 letter sent by an SS officer to the commissioner of the Warsaw Ghetto. A request for materials for the Treblinka camp, the letter would be mundane, were it not for the horror of what happened at the extermination camp. At the centre of this installation there sits an enigmatic polyhedral form, identical to another work on display in the Mason’s Yard half of the exhibition.

Together, the two exhibitions build a rich allegory of Freud’s exile, the trauma experienced by his family, and the incredibly influential theories of psychoanalysis which Freud developed.

The Freud Museum’s half of Die Traumdeutung only runs until May 25th, so be sure to catch it before then.